Dead of Winter

20

In the dream Hedda is sitting at the far end of the pontoon with a cigarette in her hand. It is a summer’s evening, the water is dark and still, shining like a mirror. Hedda has her back to Laura, her eyes are fixed on the lamp on Johnny Miller’s boathouse on the other side of the lake. Somewhere far away a bird calls, a plaintive, melancholy cry.

Laura really wants to run and throw herself into her aunt’s arms, tell her how much she’s missed her. But in the dream she is the grown-up Laura, the Laura who is angry with Hedda. Who doesn’t talk about her feelings, but locks them away in little boxes and dulls them with pills.

Hedda takes a long drag on her cigarette. It is one of the ones she rolls herself, it smells of magic herbs. The glow flickers in the darkness.

The pontoon bobs beneath Laura’s feet. She looks down at the grey, split wood. Catches a glimpse of the black water below.

When she looks up again, everything has changed. The trees have lost their leaves and the lake is partially frozen. Hedda’s long hair is grey, her back is bent, and two fingers are missing from the hand holding the cigarette.

‘I knew you’d come,’ Hedda says without turning her head. ‘She told me.’

‘Who told you?’

Hedda points out across the lake. ‘Who do you think?’ She takes a final drag and tosses the butt into the water. The glowing tip draws an arc in the darkness before it is extinguished.

‘Do you really think I’d fall off my own pontoon?’ Hedda says.

‘No.’

The bird calls again, its melancholy cry filling the air.

‘A black swan. You know what that means?’

‘That nothing is impossible,’ Laura replies. ‘Not even the impossible.’

Hedda turns and smiles sadly.

‘I’m glad you were listening, my princess.’

The soft voice makes Laura choke up. Her eyes fill with tears, but she still can’t move.

The swan calls once more, but the sound is different now, more like the crows’ warning cries.

There is a movement out in the lake, a wave surging towards the pontoon, turning into a black pillar of water looming over Hedda.

Laura opens her mouth to warn her, but before she can make a sound the pillar has metamorphosed into a young woman with long blue-black hair. She is the nymph from Laura’s painting, yet at the same time she is someone much more familiar.

As Laura says Iben’s name, the beautiful young woman changes into a horrific, blackened creature with empty eye sockets. It stinks of soot, charred hair and burned flesh. The creature flings its claw-like arms around Hedda, digs its long nails deep into her chest before dragging her down into the dark water with an ear-splitting shriek.

Laura sits up, breathes in sharply. The nymph’s shriek lingers in her mind, and her pyjamas are soaked with sweat. She is shivering, chilled to the bone, and she has to stand in the shower for over fifteen minutes to warm up. The nightmare refuses to let go.

This is her punishment for being careless with her happy pills. Not that they make her happy.

She orders breakfast from room service. Puts her pyjamas in one of the hotel’s plastic laundry bags.

Hedda has been buried, Håkansson will take care of both George and the sale of the holiday village. She doesn’t really care who buys it – the council or the castle, it makes no difference to her.

She has completed her task, and she can put all this behind her with a clear conscience.

So what is it that is still nagging away at her?

Why can’t she accept the most logical explanation? That a seventy-two-year-old woman with a weak heart who’d been smoking a joint slipped in the darkness on an icy pontoon, and fell into the water.

Is it because a part of her still sees Hedda and the lake through the eyes of a child? Believes the tales she told about nymphs and black swans, and that the lake cannot harm anyone who trusts it.

Or is she just looking for an excuse? A reason to stay, to wait a little longer for someone who obviously isn’t coming?

On the way down to the car park, she goes over the timeline.

Hedda suffers a heart attack in September. As soon as she recovers, she defies the doctor’s orders and continues to put her damaged heart under strain with a daily sauna and swim. She doesn’t stop until 12 November. That’s when the major change in her behaviour occurs. According to Kjell Green, that was just before she received the offers on Gärdsnäset.

Maybe Hedda simply decided to take better care of herself so that she’d be able to enjoy the money. However, something else happens at around the same time. Something which suggests that Hedda had other plans.

Laura drives out of the car park, then pulls over and calls Håkansson. He answers almost right away and doesn’t sound at all annoyed about being disturbed on a Sunday.

‘You told me that Hedda contacted you fairly recently, saying that she wanted to make a will. When exactly was that?’

She hears him flicking through what is presumably a paper diary. Do people still use those?

‘She came to my office on 12 November.’

‘Did she say why she wanted to make a will?’

‘No, but I knew she’d been ill.’

He doesn’t ask why she’s wondering, which she appreciates.

‘Did Hedda tell you she’d had offers for Gärdsnäset? That she was thinking of selling?’

Håkansson hesitates.

‘As I recall it did come up in the conversation, but Hedda had considered selling a couple of times in the past, so I didn’t take it too seriously – particularly as Gärdsnäset was mentioned in the will.’

‘So on 12 November, she hadn’t settled on a purchaser or made a firm decision to sell?’

‘That was certainly my perception.’

‘But now we’ve had two offers, right? One from the council and one from Vintersjöholm.’

‘Correct. I can send you the paperwork tomorrow if you like.’

‘But we haven’t had an offer from Iben’s father? He asked me about Gärdsnäset at the funeral. He seemed to believe that everything was more or less done and dusted.’

‘Ulf Jensen? No, he hasn’t made an offer. And to be honest, I don’t think that’s on the cards.’

Håkansson clears his throat, as if he’s said something he regrets. ‘I’m afraid I have to go, but I’ll speak to you tomorrow morning when you’re back in Stockholm.’

He ends the call so quickly that Laura doesn’t have the chance to say goodbye.

She continues her journey, returning to the timeline. At some point in early November, Hedda receives two offers that are sufficiently appealing to make her consider selling. But on 12 November, the day she makes a will that includes Gärdsnäset, she also stops swimming – as if she’d made a decision, possibly to hold onto the place. Because as Håkansson has just pointed out, you don’t bequeath an asset you’re intending to sell.

A week later, Hedda is found dead next to her own pontoon.

Laura scrolls down to Peter’s phone number.

‘A quick question,’ she says once the pleasantries are out of the way. ‘Have you been feeding George, or do you know of anyone else who is?’

‘No. To be honest, I didn’t think about the cat until you mentioned her at the funeral. I was relieved to hear she hadn’t starved to death. Why do you ask?’

Laura wonders whether to tell him about the cigarette butts in the forest, the offers, and the fact that Hedda’s will coincides with the last date in the bathing book, but decides against it, mainly because she wants more time to think it all over. Clarify her suspicions in her own mind before she shares them with anyone else.

‘Someone’s fed her. There were empty cat food tins by the front door.’

‘Right. No, I’ve no idea who that could be.’

They both fall silent. Laura knows she ought to hang up, but she doesn’t.

‘Are you OK?’ Peter asks.

‘I don’t actually know,’ she answers truthfully. ‘Maybe I’m just trying to process the fact that Hedda’s dead. That I’m not a child anymore.’

‘I understand,’ he says gently. ‘Even though I didn’t have any contact with her, she’s always kind of been there.’

Another silence. Laura still doesn’t want to end the call. Not yet. She decides to ask the question that’s been on her mind ever since she saw him in the church. Something she’s wondered about for a long time.

‘What happened to Tomas after the fire? After we told the police he’d started it?’

She can almost hear Peter’s discomfort.

‘He was sent to a reform school, as they were called back in the day. Then he was in and out of various institutions.’

‘Did you keep in touch with him?’

‘No.’

The answer is brusque, and comes a little too quickly.

‘I’m guessing that you read the police investigation into the fire.’

He sighs. ‘I did. It didn’t make for pleasant reading. After we made our statements, the police went in really hard on Tomas. Much too hard, I’d say. We’d never get away with that kind of interrogation now, but the fact is that Tomas confessed quite early on. They also found a bottle of paraffin in the bushes with his fingerprints on it, so we have nothing to feel guilty about, neither you nor I.’

She can tell that he’s tried to convince himself of that many times. As has she.

‘Did anyone help Tomas? Defend him?’

For a moment she thinks Peter’s hung up, but then she hears his voice again.

‘No one. Not even his father.’

Laura reaches the turning for Gärdsnäset just under half an hour later. She has no idea what she’s doing here, but she can’t go back to Stockholm. Not yet, not until she finds answers to at least some of the questions swirling around in her mind.

As she approaches Hedda’s house she sees a movement among the trees. A slim figure in dark clothing and a motorcycle helmet is running away.

Laura slams on the brakes, jumps out of the car and gives chase.

‘Stop!’

The figure is trying to put on a backpack, and the distance between them is shrinking. Running after a stranger through the forest isn’t something Laura would normally consider, but anger gives her strength, and her quarry is small and skinny.

The intruder rounds the corner of one of the dilapidated cabins and disappears from view. A second later, Laura hears the roar of an engine. She too races around the corner and sees the figure on a motocross bike, about to ride off. Summoning up a sudden burst of speed, she reaches out for the half-open backpack. The engine races, snow and leaves spurt up around the back wheel as the bike tries to gain purchase on the treacherous ground. Laura touches the backpack, the rider turns and sees how close she is. A moment of confusion, the back wheel skids sideways, the rider struggles to maintain balance, then the wheel hits a fallen branch and the bike crashes to the ground in a cloud of exhaust fumes. The engine coughs and stops. The rider has been thrown off and is lying face down, trying to move even though all the breath has been knocked out of his or her body.

Two tins of cat food have fallen out of the backpack.

Laura drags the intruder upright.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

The rider removes the helmet, with some difficulty. She is a young woman with a defiant expression and cropped, coal-black hair. She has two rings in one eyebrow.

Laura immediately recognises her from the school photograph at the police station.

This is Elsa, Peter’s daughter.